


Ask to be Unbroken

by Renegade_Reaper



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Lance (Voltron), Balmeran Hunk (Voltron), Death, F/M, Galra Empire, Galra Keith (Voltron), Galra Pidge | Katie Holt, Galra Shiro (Voltron), Minor Klance, Rebellion, Slow Burn, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 14:36:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18593287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renegade_Reaper/pseuds/Renegade_Reaper
Summary: The day Pidge met Takashi Shirogane was easily one of the worst days of her life.It was the day after her entire family — the entiretown— had been killed. She was the last, hidden away in the blood and carnage and wreckage, waiting for death to come on swift wings and take her like it had taken everything else. Ash and soot clung to her bloodied, matted fur. The smell of smoke and death was heavy on her tongue, in her nose. Whatever wounds she had were caked with blood and dirt and she could feel infection and fever seeping into her body with each hour that passed.





	Ask to be Unbroken

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to a prompt I got in September that I didn't do until today! The song is inspired by a Hozier lyric.
> 
> Warning: genocide, death, and slight panic attacks ahead. Please be aware and careful of your triggers.

The day Pidge met Takashi Shirogane was easily one of the worst days of her life.

It was the day after her entire family — the entire _town_ — had been killed. She was the last, hidden away in the blood and carnage and wreckage, waiting for death to come on swift wings and take her like it had taken everything else. Ash and soot clung to her bloodied, matted fur. The smell of smoke and death was heavy on her tongue, in her nose. Whatever wounds she had were caked with blood and dirt and she could feel infection and fever seeping into her body with each hour that passed.

The Galra Empire had arisen. Her town was not the first town in opposition, though they might have been the last. The people Pidge had grown up with, the people who she had loved — they had stood up when the Emperor had begun killing innocent outsiders and turning a blind eye to the wicked magic his wife had grown fond of. She had watched her father and the other men in the town gather around her kitchen table, pouring over notes and maps and hastily thrown together battle plans.

She had sat in the hallway with her older brother, huge ears trembling as she listened as intently as she could. She had been there, constructing weapons and helping enhance ships when her father had finally given in to her insistent pleas to help their revolution. She had watched families lose sons, daughters, brothers, mothers, and fathers. She had watched bond-mates get ripped away from their beloved as the war raged and the Emperor’s wiles grew and his humanity dwindled and then evaporated.

And just hours ago, she had watches troops of the Galra horde kill families in cold blood and set the town alight in flame. She had watched her family get murdered, narrowly avoiding death herself. She had only survived because her older brother, Matthew, had pushed her into a cupboard and told her to _be silent for once, Katie_ , and she had listened. Matthew had been dead at her feet when she’d pushed the door open.

Now it was only her in the ash and soot and blood that was left of what had been her home. Only her and countless piles of bone and fur that had once been her family and her friends.

Pidge didn’t know how long she sat there among the death and rubble. After her tears had run out and exhaustion had set in, she had sat down in the middle of what had once been the main road, staring into the horizon and wishing for death.

What came, however, was not death. Instead, a beat up ship with a worn looking Rebellion insignia painted on the side kicked up a dust storm in the near distance, disturbing the morbid silence. Four figures stepped out after the engines had cut, and Pidge watched with distant interest as they surveyed the area around them.

There wasn’t much left for them here. Just blood and dust and bones and… and Pidge. But she wasn’t much more, either. She closed her eyes, hoping maybe this was all a terrible, terrible dream and she would wake with Matt pulling her ears and laughing in her face, and her mother at the stove, and her father tinkering away in the yard.

When she did open her eyes, it wasn’t to Matt. It was to an unfamiliar voice, accompanied by grey eyes and fluffy ears poking out a tuft of white fur. She realized distantly that it was a male Galra, and that he was speaking to her. She blinked dust from hazy green eyes, reaching up to adjust the broken spectacles that she’d taken from her brother’s body.

“There’s nothing for you here.” She found herself speaking, her voice unrecognizable even to her own ears.

Those grey eyes she was looking into brighten a bit into something hopeful, and she has to close her eyes. There was no hope here, not anymore. Hope had died with the rest of her family.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” The Galra asked, his voice a soothing timbre.

An ugly smile twisted her face, her eyes opening to narrow slits. “Leave me to die with the rest of them.” She hissed, her ears pinned back. Her body was trembling.

“I think that would be a terrible way to die,” he said, his voice low and soothing and conversational, like they weren’t sitting in the prime example of the genocide the Emperor was capable of. She hated it. She wanted him to feel her pain. She wanted him to _hurt_ , to feel the fire burning in her lungs and the stiff knots in her belly and the trembling exhaustion in her body.

“Besides,” the Galra continues, oblivious to her anguish. “I think your friends would want you to continue their fight, don’t you think?”

Something in Pidge wanted to snap back, wanted to spit poison at his feet, rake her claws against his face. But the exhaustion won out the grief and she sagged forward, pressing her fingers to her face and letting out an ugly sob, one that made some part of her want to lean into this man and beg for comfort.

“Come with me.” His voice gave way to something pleading, and she doesn’t stop him when he cups her elbows. “Let’s make them pay for their deaths.”

Pidge looked up at him, her vision blurry, and took a breath. “What’s your name?”

He smiled, standing up and guiding her with him. “My name is Shiro.”

*

Pidge was taken to some sort of rebellion base after the Galra — _Shiro_ — had coaxed her to join him and his crew.

She had heard her father talk of this place, once or twice, when she had snuck out of her room after bedtime to listen to the meetings. Somehow, it was nothing and also everything she had imagined. For one thing, there were many more people than she dreamed. Along with that, there were no maps and strategies planned by the light of the lamp — instead there were entire meeting rooms and holoscreens dedicated to that.There were differences, though. Many of the people looked to be close to her age. They functioned less like a military and more like a city, including the apartments and different shops.

Pidge didn’t get to see much of it at first. She was whisked away to the medical bay almost immediately after they had set foot in the hangar. Everything was so bright and clean, and she realized just how filthy she was when they pushed her into a private shower and gave her some sort of thin hospital gown.

Getting her brother’s blood out of her fur was easily one of the hardest things Pidge had ever made herself do. In some odd way, it felt like betrayal.

After she’d been scrubbed and poked and prodded, she was given a room close to the med bay, where they could monitor her. The room itself was lonelier than the dying city had been.

When Pidge was finally left alone to her own thoughts and devices, one thought took precedence over every other, and it was unwanted in the worst sort of way.

_I am alive and my family is not._

What a cruel fate — outliving your parents and your older brother. Afraid of what was to come, Pidge bowed her head and cried for every lost life she had left behind.

*

Shiro was persistent in the worst way possible.

Every day, he showed up to accompany Pidge places; to the cafeteria, to the library, to the med bay, to her own room. At first, she’d done her damndest to ignore him. It was humiliating enough to have been found in the state she had been, but it was even worse to have to look at him and remember that he was also the one who had taken her away from the death she had wanted to die.

Nonetheless, he was adamant on staying around her. It became difficult to ignore the person who held doors for you or introduced you to people or put you in social situations where not talking was considered rude instead of necessary. Pidge was pushed from cold silence to grudging conversation in a matter of days.

(She tried to convince herself it wasn’t because when he smiled as she picked up the conversation to take it somewhere, he looked a little like her brother when he had found a flaw in a textbook. Gleeful and excited.)

But it didn’t stop there! Oh, no. He’d gone and introduced her to his crew, too, which meant now they came around more often. Tiptoe though they might around her, because she was still ticking like a bomb waiting to go off. Pidge became unwilling acquaintances with three more people.

Keith was Shiro’s younger brother, a hotheaded young Galra who shot off at the mouth and had a temper that often got him in trouble and in dangerous situations. He was the opposite of Shiro in so many ways, right down to his constant frown, that Pidge wondered if they could really be siblings at all. She and Matt had often been mistaken for twins, despite their three year age difference.

His mate, and partner in crime, was an Altean named Lance. He was just as mouthy, although his snark was more sass and often more playful in nature. He and his mate, Keith, often bickered, but Pidge deduced that it was how they showed their affection.

Her favorite by far was the Balmeran named Hunk. He was brilliant, whip-smart and one of the kindest people she had ever met. Although it was hard to get close to him, because they ran on the same wavelength that she and her brother had — and that was just too painful for now.

Pidge often found herself hanging with variations of the group — but Shiro was the only constant, like her solid shadow, a calming force beside her. It was overwhelming to be near such an easy version of family.

She tried to tough it out and be with them. She did. But after the second time they were all together, it became too much.

The trigger was sudden and unbidden. Lance and Keith had paused in their bickering to gaze lovingly at each other, caught up in some silly argument over what they wanted to eat for dinner. Hunk was talking, or trying to talk, mechanics with Pidge, and Shiro was sitting at her side, watching like an approving parent.

It was all too much. Too familiar. She could hear the screams echoing in her ears, could taste the blood and ash on her tongue. Her brother had let her borrow his book on Altean mechanics the night before it all happened. That same book had crumbled away to dust at her feet when she’d stumbled to crouch at her mother’s side.

Pidge stood with an audible, wet sort of gasp. Everyone stopped, but not her mind. No, her mind was filled with death and decay and the sickening sort of guilt that came with being the only one out of hundreds to survive.

“Pidge?” Hunk asked, trailing off. Lance and Keith look away from one another and over to her.

It’s all so much.

The overwhelming urge to flee hits her, and she stumbles in the direction where her room was, where she could hide and scream and beat her fists on the wall until her claws broke and she could bleed. Just like all of them had.

She presses her hands to her ears. They’re all up on their feet before she can make them stop, make them stay, make them leave her alone. All of them are speaking, all of them are asking things of her — all of them, except for Shiro.

A hand comes up to rest on her shoulder, and it’s like all of the rest of the world goes quiet.

“Pidge,” Shiro said, and she can feel herself fracturing.

“I _can’t._ ” She gasped.

She expects to be asked to explain herself. She expects there to be more words, but she can’t _put_ words to the feeling of ash and blood and flame clogging her throat. She can’t make them understand the guilt that she wears like a second skin.

But then she’s being lifted up into strong arms. For a moment, she struggles, but Shiro is nuzzling her ears and it’s _so familiar_ that she relaxes with a wet sob into his chest. After that, the tears that have become plentiful in these few days return in full force.

Pidge is carried back to her room, but Shiro doesn’t put her down. Instead, he climbed his way into her bed, nestling her smaller body close to his and holding her the way a lover might. Her ugly sobbing turned to weeping, giving way to weak exhaustion.

“You will not feel this way forever.” His voice was close to her ear, making it flick back to brush against his cheek.

_Good_ , she thought, _because I am broken and if I break anymore I will turn to dust._

“You aren’t alone, Pidge. You will never be alone.”

“How aren’t I alone?” She argued, her gaze clouded with liquid anguish. “I have lost everything. _Everything_. I have no family, no home. I’d say I’m pretty alone.”

The male Galra was quiet for a time, rubbing his cheek against her ear. His silence was not malicious; simply thoughtful.

“I am here.” He offered after she had settled back into the horrible spiral of death and dead and dying and guilt.

“What?” Pidge was bewildered.

“I am here,” Shiro said again. She could feel his smile, soft and timid, against her head. “I will not leave you.”

“You cannot stop death, Shiro.” She said, resigned.

“No,” he agreed, pulling back a bit. His fingers caught just under her chin and she found herself looking up into the same grey eyes that had pulled her from her stupor the first time. “But I can promise to be here for as long as I can.”

_Let me in_ , his gaze screamed, stealing the breath from her lungs. _Let me show you how I will stay._

She didn’t want to. All of her instincts warned her to push him away, to turn him to the door and order him out. It was logic now. Get too close to people and it would kill you to watch them die. She had already died a hundred times over — one more would fracture her beyond repair.

But another part of her was drawn to his soft reassurance and his willingness to help her heal.

_Put me back together_ , that part of her begged. _Put me back together and ask me to be unbroken._

“You promise?” Her words are whispered, afraid to be loud in case someone heard and came to rip them away again.

Shiro’s smile is the soft sheets of her childhood bed. His eyes are the grey of the dusk in the summer in her village. His closeness is the balm to every ache that had seeped into her bones and weighed her down. “I promise.”

Pidge had never believed anything more in her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Shidge isn't a very popular ship and I feel that because of this, there is not enough Shidge angst in the world. So here you go, have some angst. I adored writing this and I really hope you liked reading it!
> 
> Come find me on tumblr @renywrites or @gravitationallychallengedrabbits!


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